How Andrew Ross Sorkin got into journalism

Roben Farzad of Full Disclosure interviewed New York Times business columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin — who is also a co-anchor on CNBC — about how he got into journalism.

Sorkin begged Times ad columnist Stuart Elliott for an internship while he was a senior in high school in Westchester County, New York for the summer of 1995.

“I’ll Xerox. I’ll staple. I will do whatever you want,” said Sorkin.

Times journalist Felicity Barringer mistook him for a full-time staffer and asked him to write an article about modems and the sounds they make. Sorkin had Elliott review the article before he turned it in. Sorkin was paid $50 and asked to stay for the summer. By the end of the summer, he earned a byline.

“This was supposed to be a one and done,” said Sorkin. “This was not supposed to end this way.”

Sorkin then attended Cornell University. During the summer, he would continue to work for the Times, including during a summer he spent in London while taking classes at the London School of Economics. After graduating from college in 1999, the Times asked him to go back to London to cover mergers and acquisitions.

“I was always anxious and scared because I had never done this before,” said Sorkin, who said he didn’t even know how to write an earnings story at the time. But he made it a goal to have the Times be competitive with the Financial Times on mergers and acquisitions.

“It was always about the people. It was always about the characters,” he added. “I was always attracted to these people and what motivated them.”

Chris Roush is the Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.

This website is operated by Chris Roush, who teaches “Writing and Reporting,” “Business Reporting,” “Economics Reporting,” and “Business and the Media” at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.